The game is balanced around having two DPS for every tank and healer. Healers can outheal one DPS. Two competent DPS will kill a lone healer once their DCDs are exhausted.

Ideally, a friendly tank will Guard you if they see two DPS switching to you. Friendly DPS should also be helping to take the pressure off. It's on you to use your DCDs properly, position yourself correctly and kite when needed. It's also on your teammates to peel for you, stay in your line of sight and not overextend.

Unfortunately, in warzones, this will not always happen: teams are often lopsided, uncoordinated and of disparate skill levels. Some maps or areas are just not friendly to healers, with few good options for LoS. You have to try to force the fight in favourable positions. Sometimes, though, there are no good places to stand. Sometimes your team is outcomped or outgunned.

If you are playing by yourself, learn to play defensive. Accept that against coordinated teams, you won't last long in the moshpit. It may sound counterintuitive but you must prioritise your survival over that of your teammates. Stay in the backline and maintain distance. Keep your teammates between you and the other team. Always stay near LoS. This will stand you in good stead if you decide to progress to ranked arenas, where sloppy positioning and other mistakes will be punished.

Warzones and arenas are team formats and I believe they are best played as part of a coordinated group. Make friends. Good communication is key. :)

I’ll refer you to multi’s guide for recommended builds. As a rule, DPS and healers (in PvE and PvP) want to use Lethal mods and Adept/Quick Savant/Initiative enhancements. This maximises DPS/HPS.

Tank gearing, as we stress in the guide, is more complicated. In PvE, the optimal build depends on the encounter. Under section 4.1, we link to some excellent PvE-oriented guides which may be of help. Gearing for PvP as a tank is even more complicated: I simply have no hard and fast rules for you.

Shield Rating and Absorb Rating are closely linked. Absorb Rating affects how much damage is mitigated when an attack is shielded against. You are correct that critical hits and attacks that deal internal/elemental damage cannot be shielded against. So no, Shield Chance will not reduce the frequency of critical hits taken.

In PvE, the optimal ratio of Defence Rating to Shield Rating to Absorb Rating depends on the encounter. See KeyboardNinja’s Ideal Tank Stats for a more thorough treatment.

According to Georg Zoeller, former Principal Lead Combat Designer for SWTOR, an attacker’s Critical Chance, if high enough, pushes the defender’s Shield Chance “off the table” but not vice versa.

For example, if an attacker has 40% Critical Chance and the defender has 30% Shield Chance, that means 40% of attacks will critically hit, 30% will be shielded against and the remaining 30% will normally hit (100% - 40% - 30% = 30%).

If an attacker has 70% Critical Chance and the defender has 40% Shield Chance, this adds up to more than 100% so the defender only has an effective 30% Shield Chance (100% - 70% - 40% = -10%).

If the attacker’s Critical Chance is ≥100%, the defender’s effective Shield Chance is reduced to zero.

Disclaimer: I haven’t tested this rigorously myself so if I am mistaken, I hope someone better informed will correct me.

As for PvP, players put out a lot of damage that can’t be defended or shielded against, which is why PvP tanks typically gear for maximum DPS, not mitigation.

Despite having played SWTOR for years, there were a lot of gaps in my knowledge about damage calculation, etc. I wanted to remedy this and figured other players might be in the same boat. To that end, KissingAiur and I set about writing a comprehensive guide that would be useful to newcomers and seasoned players alike.

This text is the result of several weeks of reading, testing and pestering our more knowledgeable friends. I’d like to thank doc and Puddlejumper for their insights and give all due credit to Bant, dipstik, KeyboardNinja and multi, whose excellent work is referenced throughout the guide.

It’s important to me to put out good information but I’m only human. If you spot any errors or if anything is unclear, please let me know.

Part of the reason we chose not to cover stat allocations in depth is that it's complicated: there isn't really a right or wrong answer. In some situations, more mitigation is preferred; in others, you want to gear for maximum DPS. The current meta definitely favours DPS builds, however. I'll defer to someone like doc or Puddlejumper when it comes to specific stat allocations for Vanguard tanks.

The set bonuses are definitely useful but by no means essential, IMO. I would rather have an undergeared tank who knows how to deal damage, Guard swap, peel, taunt and CC than a well-geared tank without a clue. :)

KissingAiur (a.k.a. Hottie), doc and I have been taking a closer look at the Bolster mechanic and wanted to share our findings. We compared gear with 208, 230, 236, 242 and 248 item ratings (for DPS and healing disciplines).

Hottie’s clocked up hundreds of hours healing in warzones and solo/team ranked and she’s passionate about sharing what she’s learned. The guide has been a labour of love and we’re both really proud of the result. It covers everything from gearing to ranked strategies so we hope it’ll be useful to new players and veterans alike.

The author’s top priority is putting out accurate, well-researched information. If I’ve done my job as an editor, there shouldn’t be (m)any errors but in a document of this size, it’s hard to catch everything. If you have any comments, corrections or suggestions, Hottie and I will be monitoring this thread and the guide’s comments section. You can also contact Hottie on Twitter.

I wish I could tell you! I found it on a site hosting high-res wallpapers and assumed it was a piece of concept art I hadn't seen before. I deployed all my Google fu to try to find the original artist to no avail. If anyone can track them down so I can give credit (or have them yell at me and demand I take their work down), please let me know.

Reiterating what Knin's said, while high values of alacrity yield higher DPS in dummy parses, uptime in PvP is much lower. Consider that a good Concealment operative may do 10k DPS on a dummy but 4–5k DPS in a warzone. If you can't string together multiple GCDs and your rotation isn't perfect (because you're stunned, slowed, kited, etc), the value of alacrity is diminished.

It's also important to note that even in idealised situations like dummy parses (i.e., 100% uptime), a high alacrity build yields only a few percent more DPS than a 0% alacrity build. Again, as uptime drops, alacrity becomes less useful and crit/mastery more so.

A final point: while higher values of alacrity—or any other stat—may feel more comfortable/satisfying (subjective), that doesn't necessarily translate into an (objective) increase in effective DPS.

TL;DR: you can't replicate the dynamic situations of PvP in a dummy parse.

Evasive Imperative is listed as a recommended utility. The pros and cons of using Escape Plan vs Evasive Imperative are also covered: if you're not under focus fire, you get limited benefit from Evasive Imperative; Escape Plan also synergises well with Augmented Shields and Med Shield. Also, the importance of maintaining HoTs and using Kolto Infusion is mentioned several times.

Thanks for pointing out some of the errors/outdated guidance re. assassins. I should have caught those and we'll amend ASAP.

Sorry about that. It's loading fine for me in all my web browsers and across devices and nobody else is reporting problems. Maybe you have some addons or something enabled which are preventing the site from loading?

My friend and guildmate Knin is one of the most knowledgeable SWTOR players I've met: he's won a number of duelling tournaments, is active in team arenas and has consistently ranked highly in solo arenas over the seasons (including a top 10 operative in S4 and two T1 operatives in S8).

If you were going for subtle, I'd have suggested a different account name. ;)

The game's poor matchmaking is an unfortunate but inevitable result of a small player base. If you are new to a five-year-old game, you must also accept the inevitable skill gap between you and more experienced players and work to overcome it.

I queue for warzones because I enjoy objective play. I'd also argue that the game is more balanced around 8 vs 8, though I accept that's a subjective judgment. If BioWare reintroduced ranked warzones, I'd be all over it.

I don't play solo ranked because I don't enjoy the arena deathmatch format (or the huge element of randomness). As for team ranked, the scene is virtually dead.

I queue with my guildmates because I would rather play with my friends than with strangers. Progressing in an MMO takes teamwork and SWTOR encourages teamwork through its guild system. Everyone has the opportunity to queue for warzones as a balanced group of four (which is only 50% of the team). If you choose not to, you disadvantage yourself.

As for queue syncing, I feel no need to defend myself or my guildmates against allegations without a shred of supporting evidence.